- Venue
- UCLAN
- Location
Though the Great War may almost be beyond living memory, Janet Manogue seeks to record and remember its effect on lives and landscape through her poised and accomplished artwork. This elegantly hung work (way above the standard of her peers), uses the calm iconography of trench maps to demonstrate how a meaningless chaos grew up and out from the Paschendale mud in the service of what now seems a pointless and remote conflict. Simple series of images form the core of the show, and although most of the work is framed and wall based the logic of these works seems to be best expressed on a small concertina book mounted on a small ledge.
Manogue overlays prints of different line maps of a battlefield (we are always blue, the enemy always red), until the images move from sense to a very real non-sense. The final image of one sequence is as dense and hard to pick apart as any Jackson Pollock. Each line nominally represents a trench or border, but in fact shows how little was gained for such a high cost, only to be lost and reclaimed for further loss of life.
By not including the human figure in all but a very few drawings, Manogue has created a restriction similar to that imposed by the War Office on the Official War Artists of the time. No dead bodies were to be depicted.
In three delicately coloured, modestly sized lithographs a more detailed battle map takes shape. The final piece (of three), is annotated to show how many men fell or are buried across the landscape, whether officially or still unfound.
The use of maps is not uncommon in art these days, but by using the decorative and functional elements of charts that were both in flux and speculative whilst being designed to serve a very clear, albeit temporary, purpose, Manogue throws the narrative they imply forward to our own troubled times. All areas, this works implies, are up for grabs, if men in power decide to fight for it or for what lies beneath.
The irony of course is there were times during the slaughter of the Western Front that the land was unmappable due to the rain and the shelling. It may be a kind of artistic archeology that drives Manogue forward. Her great grandfather survived the Great War but was gassed, and according to her family was “never the same” and never spoke of his experiences.
Perhaps the interior is as difficult to chart as any Belgian field-cum-crater. Manogue hints at this, but perhaps her next suite of work will explore it further. I hope so.
Artist, arts administrator and writer.Check out http://www.bryaneccleshall.co.uk
